Nada (1974) - Claude Chabrol

Why did Chabrol move from his domestic milieu to create some average 1970s political thriller?

Munich (2005)
Steven Spielberg

I don't doubt Spielberg's intelligence, thanks to some of his better films; however, while making a particular film, he needs to decide whether he is making a commercial film or a serious film; whether he is a showman or a serious artist. He often seems to try combining both, and ends up achieving neither. In Munich, the same pattern repeats. It seems confused between a normal action thriller and a predictable political statement (which I agree with, but which need not help make a film better) about violence begetting violence, or an eye for an eye making the world go blind. The structure is interesting enough, too, with gradually rising graphs of the personal rising up to present an opposition to the political, against its simplistic aim of serving 'them' right, or that of the righteous assassins seemingly behaving more and more like the evil terrorists they are supposed to eliminate, and of the existential questioning that arises in any sensitive human as a result thereof. The film fails on two counts: the script is almost mathematical, where even human emotions are delivered in a carefully measured manner, as in a recipe. Then, there is the attempt to make it an edge-of-the-seat thriller, with ploys like the little girl who picks the telephone, or the Dutch woman who turns from seductress to assassin to assassinated, or the car in New York that seems to tail Avner, but turns out to be harmless. Such an action-packed narrative leaves little room for developing the characters of the assassins or the haunted, unless you call one line about the 'narrative of the survival' by a translator of the Arabian Nights just before he gets killed as character development (but it did make me think that perhaps the original book was not so banal). The frequent mini-climaxes also leave little time to reflect on the serious theme the film seems to want to develop. Moreover, taking a cute action hero (used to playing The Incredible Hulk, or Hector in a cloyingly simplistic version of the Iliad) as the central character Avner also mars the film, because he is woefully inadequate in convincing us of the doubts and fissures that develop in his character over the course of the film. I also found it unintentionally funny of Spielberg when he resorted to clichés like the Eiffel tower to show that we are in Paris, or the rain in London, and a French Godfather discussing cheese, all of which create a sense of kitsch instead of lending any dignity to the already predictable narrative.

Saturday
by Ian McEwan

Warning: Contains spoilers if you have not read the book.

Initially, I found the climax a bit of what we call here 'like a Hindi film' - meaning implausible and artificial, even if cleverly constructed. However, when I thought more about it, I found the construction very touching. Throughout the book, Henry Perowne struggles with the 'for or against the war in Iraq' question: he can not side with the pacifists picnicking, obstructing normal life and creating mounds of litter in London, which he thinks is an affront to people who have suffered from Saddam's regime, like his Sumerian professor patient. On the other hand, the argument for war by his American anaesthetist drives him to argue against it, like the pacifists. When he sees the burning plane, his first instinct is that it's an attack on his civilization, but he knows he was being paranoid when he realizes, after it becomes clear that the pilots were not terrorists, that instead of feeling relieved, he almost feels cheated, since he subconsciously wanted them to be revealed as aggressors, thus justifying the war against Islam. However, another question keeps haunting Perowne like a sub-theme - whether he was right in saving himself from the situation with Baxter by hitting him on his weak point - the disease that killed his father, and which would kill him, and the knowledge of which makes Baxter insecure. This is a personal version of the same dilemma - whether aggression makes Islamic fundamentalism stronger or weaker, and whether it would liberate the insecure inhabitants of the Islamic world, made insecure by seeing in decline what they have inherited as their tradition, or whether it would make them more aggressive by making them more insecure. By hitting Baxter at the end when he is under the spell of poetry, Perowne has done it once again, but it is his daughter this time, with a hint from her poet grandfather, (whom he dislikes and finds nothing in common with, no empathy even) who shows him the correct way, which is to try to save Baxter with all honesty and compassion. It's the only way to deal with aggression. In that sense, the assault on his family is like a 9/11 for the Perownes, and the melodrama is necessary for Perowne to come to terms with his own dilemma and reach a decision that, after all, liberates him from his fears. The whole device (for it is a literary device) of having the daughter naked, pregnant and reciting poetry works as a metaphor for whatever is worthwhile in human civilization, which, although it appears faint-hearted and weak, is the only 'valid' way to counter Baxter, Saddam and fanaticism in general. That is exactly what Gandhi meant when he rejected violence as the means of the struggle for independence - defeat the enemy with what you are, which can only make you stronger and freer.

A link quoting the Mathew Arnold poem that Daisy reads to Baxter:
http://liternet.bg/publish/denny/dov_bea.html